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Unsealed Letters Offer Glimpse of Salinger

The letters, a total of 11, were written between 1951 and 1993, from one buddy, or “Buddyroo,” to another. In sharp and familiar prose, laced with humor and biting wit, the writer gives an intimate peek into his life and thoughts at precise moments in time. Read so many years later, they are filled with surprises.

The recipient of the letters was E. Michael Mitchell, a Westport, Conn., commercial artist who had designed the book jacket for a best-selling novel.

The author of the letters — and that novel — was J. D. Salinger.

Now, two weeks after Mr. Salinger’s death at age 91, the letters are being made public. They are likely to be among the first batch of many such correspondences, given Mr. Salinger’s history of letter-writing, that will surface and deepen — or perhaps even alter — the public’s understanding of one of the 20th-century’s most puzzling, and puzzled about, literary lights.

The letters furnish what may be the most specific description yet of Mr. Salinger’s writing habits in the years after 1965, when he stopped publishing. Even in the 1980s, he describes a highly disciplined writing regimen, starting each morning at 6, never later than 7, and not brooking interruption, “unless absolutely necessary or convenient.” This in-his-own-words account may bolster the conviction and hope of some that he left additional works behind.

The letters to Mr. Mitchell also capture, like Polaroid snapshots, how Mr. Salinger initially embraced the high life he tasted as an up-and-coming author — supping with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh in the couple’s London home, for instance — before souring on the social scene and parts of New York that helped shape his fiction.

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Salinger’s letters to the friend who designed the book jacket of “Catcher in the Rye” are at the Morgan Library.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

Trips to New York to meet friends, wolf down Chinese food, browse bookstores or take in shows, became rarer over the years, according to the letters, though Mr. Salinger acknowledged still getting a kick out of the subway into his ’60s.

The correspondence reveals an enduring fascination with pop culture and politics that is at odds with the popular mythology of the past half-century of Mr. Salinger as an odd recluse. His letters are peppered with sharp references — sometimes a bit too sharp — to household names like John Wayne, Nancy Reagan and even Eddie Murphy.

Now cloistered at the Morgan Library and Museum in Midtown Manhattan, the letters had reached the museum by way of gift, a single clamshell box of papers in a much larger collection of 20th-century American literature assembled by Carter Burden and donated to the museum in 1998, two years after Mr. Burden’s death.

Museum officials agreed to keep the letters’ contents under wraps, even from their own staff, so long as Mr. Salinger was alive, out of a voluntary abundance of caution. But the self-imposed seal was lifted last week, and the letters are being prepared for exhibition.

The literary world has been bracing for just such a moment. Despite his move to New Hampshire in 1953, his aversion to publicity and his withdrawal from the New York scene, Mr. Salinger, by his own admission, could not always resist the impulse to fire off cranky letters to people who criticized his behavior, polite letters to schoolchildren who popped questions and flowery letters to women who caught his eye. He had gone to great lengths to keep such unpublished musings private, successfully fighting one biographer all the way to the United States Supreme Court to assert control over their content.

The Morgan’s letters are particularly tasty. Mr. Mitchell, a onetime neighbor of Mr. Salinger’s in Westport, Conn., had designed a dreamlike image of a red carousel horse for the cover of Mr. Salinger’s first novel, “Catcher in the Rye,” in 1951. More than once in his letters, Mr. Salinger informs Mr. Mitchell, who died last year, that he has “never had two dearer friends” than Mr. Mitchell and his ex-wife Bet, a “tri-cornered” friendship.

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“They were friends for 40 years,’’ said Declan Kiely, the curator and department head of literary and historical manuscripts at the Morgan.Credit
Robert Stolarik for The New York Times

The references to Mr. Salinger’s writings are tantalizingly specific. One 1966 letter refers to an accumulation of “ten, twelve years’ work” that includes “two particular scripts — books really — that I’ve been hoarding at and picking at for years.”

The first letter in the batch is dated May 22, 1951, weeks before “Catcher in the Rye” was published. The letter opens “Dear Buddyroos” — a moniker that the book’s hero, Holden Caulfield, tosses around, too. It provides an account of Mr. Salinger’s trip that month to London, where he was the toast of the town, basking in the perks that come with being an up-and-coming writer.

He shares his amusement at the very British offer of tea he received during intermission at “Swan Lake.” He tells of going on a couple of dates with a model for Vogue whom he met on the voyage. “No real fun, though,” he reports. A night at the theater ended with his being invited to sup at the elegant Chelsea home of the couple who starred in the show: Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh.

“Naturally,” Mr. Salinger recounts with some chagrin, over cocktails “some gin went up my nose. I damn near left by the window.”

Fast-forward 15 years to the next letter, which appears to have been sent in October 1966. In that time span, much had changed. Mr. Salinger had become one of the most sought-after writers in America. He had settled in New Hampshire to escape the spotlight and gradually lost interest in having his works published. He had gotten married and become a father. And in September of that year, his wife, Claire, filed for divorce, claiming in court papers that continuation of the marriage would “seriously injure her health and endanger her reason.”

In that second letter, Mr. Salinger shares the delight he felt in taking his two young children to Manhattan, mostly to visit the dentist. His 12-year-old daughter got a kick out of knowing that their suite at the Sherry-Netherland had once been used by the Beatles. The threesome dined out and enjoyed a stroll on Fifth Avenue after dark.

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The carousel horse that accompanied the first edition was the creation of Michael Mitchell, whose letters from J.D. Salinger are at the Morgan Library and Museum.Credit
Associated Press

Mr. Salinger tells his friend that he loves watching his children sleep — another trait he shares with Holden — and has used those hours to write well into the night.

Two months later, Mr. Salinger is back at the typewriter thanking his friend for an update he devoured “greedily.” This time, though, he reports that he has become less enamored with New York’s charms. “Meaning,” he writes, “that there aren’t any places I like or love there any more. With the exception of the Museum of Natural History.”

While that was also a spot that Holden found comforting, Mr. Salinger also fantasizes about visiting Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in “the faint hope that some kindly old Hasid from the eighteenth century” would invite him home for matzoh ball soup or a cup of tea.

By August 1979, his interest in the city has further waned. He discusses how much he enjoys the 30 hours he spends each August mowing his fields atop “the big dopey tractor” and writes that he was in New York for the first time in months and hated it. He and a companion attended a performance of “Ain’t Misbehavin'.” The best part, he reports, was the subway ride.

The correspondence picks up on Dec. 30, 1983, when he bluntly warns his friend that Random House had hired a British author to do a biography of him. “I’ll weep if they bother you and Bet,” he writes, describing feelings akin to murder.

Two years later, he is apologizing to “dear old Mike” for his shortcomings as a friend and for solitary ways that are so ingrained, he can’t recall ever answering the telephone “without unconsciously gritting my teeth.”

It is not clear why Mr. Mitchell, given his obvious bond with Mr. Salinger, might have parted with the letters, resulting in their eventual sale to Mr. Burden. The last one, postmarked in January 1993, suggests that the decision may have sprung from Mr. Salinger’s refusal to send his friend an autographed copy of “Catcher.” “Most stuff that is genuine is better left unsaid,” the author wrote back, in a note that is crisper than the others.